AI Pathfinding. The end of traps in ARK?

if you've tried using a trap in AR survival ascended you might have experienced something a bit like this why does this happen and what can we do about it well stick around because that's what we're going to find out in this video so this behavior is the new AI path finding system that's basically supposed to make the dinos smarter although that's a bit questionable in its current state but anyway not only does it prevent wild creatures walking into structures but it helps both wild and tamed creatures navigate around terrain even helping prevent them from falling off cliffs but the part that we're really going to focus in on is this behavior of them avoiding structures so let's try answer two questions firstly What creatures avoid traps and secondly what structures are seen as an obstruction so what creatures are affected well after testing dozens of creatures what I can tell you is that it's only the landbased creatures aerial and aquatic creatures will still move toward their Target in a direct path regardless of what obstacles are in front of them now I have found a weird exception to the landbased pathf finding which is that an Allosaurus on its own or a UT without any carnos surrounding it w pathfind so what type of structures or what configuration of structures do they avoid to test this I started by trying all the foundational structures on their own with both large and small creatures what I found with foundations and triang foundations was that as long as they weren't too high for the creature to walk over the creature wouldn't pathfind around them with pillars and Gates the small creatures would have no problem going through but the larger creatures would realize that they couldn't fit and they'd walk all the way around but the most unexpected one was fence foundations and fence aparts All Creatures no matter the size would walk all the way around them so given that foundations seemed to cause no disturbance to the path I started adding other struct to them for further testing I've be here all day telling you about these tests so to cut a long story short you can trick some creatures to an extent for example this Theory doesn't seem to see these ceilings but one thing that's been consistent in all my tests is that they always seem to know if they're going to get stuck so I think it's safe to say that trapping as we've known it for all these years is gone whether that's a good thing for the game or not is a question that I'll get on to in just a minute but before we do let's consider five options you're left with for trapping land creatures so option one is to struggle on with the same old traps it's not impossible to get them into these traps it's just very difficult the best chance you've got is staying very close to the creature while it hits you through the Trap option two is bear trap and build around with Gates or Billboards this is a method that I hate from a creative standpoint but there's no denying it's more feasible than ever now that structures have no pickup time option three is to pick and drop creatures into a trap this isn't possible on official PVE and doesn't work for the biggest creatures like giggers and carers but for everything else it's a great option option four is WFT motorboats and platform dinos as of making this video they don't seem to see the platform structures as an obstruction presumably because they're not attached to the world so providing this doesn't get patched it's another really good option option five is going to be the least popular but the one that excites me the most which is to invent something this game's still very new just because I haven't had much success with trapping them yet it doesn't mean we won't find a way so if it's something that interests you I encourage you to do some experiment and of your own because you might just find a game changing Discovery the one question remains to be answered is wild path finding a good thing or a bad thing for the game this really comes down to a matter of opinion but in my opinion it's both it's good in that the more intelligent that can make the AI the more immersive the game becomes but the bad side of it is that it's a step away from one of the most creative aspects of the game you can make the most interesting taming mechanic for a creature but if there's no creativity involved once you've learned that method of taming all you can do is repeat what you've already done but when there's creativity by means of building that constant question of is there a better way to do this can keep a community fueled for years so what I'm saying is keep making the dinos smarter I'm all for that but give us creative tools to outsmart them in return but that's just my thoughts let me know what you think to the whole pathfinding situation in the comments [Music] below

Channel: captain fatdog

Views: 366,949

Keywords: captain fatdog, ark, ark survival, ark survival evolved, AI, pathfinding, traps, trapping, taming, artificial intelligence

Id: ZOmMAOkcsmM

Length: 5min 2sec (302 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023